Pollution

Thousands of people in southern Tunisia joined a rally demanding the closure of a state-run phosphate plant blamed for cancers, respiratory illnesses, and a mass poisoning that hospitalised more than 120 people.

NEW YORK — When the court lights flicker on at the U.S. Open, tennis stars shine under illumination designed to cut light pollution.

The wedge-shaped lamps around the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows direct light onto the players without spewing it into the surrounding skies.

The stadium complex is the only professional sports venue certified by a group that’s trying to preserve the night sky around the world. Across North America and Canada, schools and local parks have also swapped out their lights on baseball fields, running tracks and other recreation grounds to preserve their view of the stars and protect local wildlife.

Night lights can disrupt bird migration and confuse nocturnal critters like frogs and fireflies. Lights on sports fields are especially bright and cool, and often cast their glare into neighborhoods.

In renovations over the last decade, the U.S. Tennis Assn. swapped metal halide bulbs for shielded LED lights. The complex’s 17 tournament courts — including Arthur Ashe Stadium — and five practice courts were approved as dark sky-friendly last year.

USTA officials wanted the best lighting possible on their courts, which also happened to be friendly to dark skies. Their lighting company suggested striking a balance that would satisfy crowds and TV crews while cutting down spillover into the surrounding environment.

“This is an international event that has an impact on the community,” said the USTA’s managing director of capital projects and engineering, Chuck Jettmar. “Let’s minimize that and make sure that everybody’s happy with it.”

Designing lights for dark skies

U.S. Open qualifying matches last week were punctuated by players grunting, crickets chirping and audiences cheering. Rows of lights stood like sentries above, adorned with flat visors that guided the glow onto the action.

The lights at Flushing Meadows glow at a quarter of their brightness when the courts are rented for play during the year. They’re approved by DarkSky International, a nonprofit that gives similar designations to cities and national parks. The group widened its focus to include sports arenas in recent years and has certified more than 30 venues since 2019 — including high school football fields and youth soccer fields.

“We live in a world where we need to engage with one another in the nighttime environment, and that’s OK,” said DarkSky spokesperson Drew Reagan. “That’s a beautiful thing and there’s a way to do that responsibly.”

The organization typically approves proposals at sports fields before any light fixtures are installed or replaced. Once construction is complete, a representative measures the glow and glare against a set of guidelines that benefit the night.

Renovating a field with dark skies in mind can cost about 5% to 10% more than traditional sports lighting, according to James Brigagliano, who runs DarkSky’s outdoor sports lighting program. Venues may require a few extra fixtures since the light shining from them is more targeted.

Most arenas make the change during scheduled maintenance and renovation, working with sports lighting company Musco. The company lights more than 3,000 venues a year, including college football stadiums, tennis courts and rail yards.

At Superstition Shadows Park in Apache Junction, Ariz., kids play T-ball and baseball in the evenings, when the darkness offers a brief respite from the summer heat. The city’s parks and recreation department replaced its already-aging lights with shielded, dark sky-friendly fixtures last year with federal and local government funding.

People venture to Apache Junction partly because “they can get out of the city and still see stars,” said the city’s parks and recreation director, Liz Langenbach. The city is at the edge of the Phoenix metro area, bordered by rolling mountains and sweeping deserts.

“The choices we make on lighting, I think, affect all of that,” Langenbach said.

At Université Sainte-Anne in Canada, students run on a new track and soccer field outfitted with lights that DarkSky approved last year. Researchers at the university study native, nocturnal animals like the northern saw-whet owl.

The lights are “good for everyone,” said university spokesperson Rachelle LeBlanc. “For tourism, for our students, for our neighbors, for the animals that we share our campus with.”

How to cut light pollution

Night lights harm the surrounding environment no matter how shielded they are. DarkSky-approved fields still allow a small fraction of their light to be pointed up because it’s necessary to keep track of flying balls.

“You can have the absolute best, most carefully designed stadium lighting in the world, and you’re still creating light pollution,” said Travis Longcore, an urban light pollution expert at UCLA.

The U.S. Open courts are side-by-side with bright lights from Manhattan and Queens — so they can only darken a slice of the sky. But DarkSky says every light fixture makes a difference, and one professional arena can influence others.

“I’m not saying we as humans have to turn all the lights off,” said Longcore. “I think you have to make improvements from where you are.”

Ramakrishnan writes for the Associated Press. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

As global plastic treaty talks end in failure, with no agreement, all is not lost in the global momentum to cut plastic pollution. United States lawmakers recently introduced the Microplastics Safety Act, for example, mandating the Department of Health and Human Services to study microplastics exposure and health impacts. The bill reflects growing concern in Congress about the plastics health crisis and the broad bipartisan support to address it.

However, given that plastic production, use, and hence exposure, continue to increase every year, we should not wait idly for the US report’s findings or more failed global plastic treaty talks. There is enough evidence to take action now. Below, we highlight three areas that can help reduce everyone’s exposure to microplastics: culture, business and policy.

In culture, there are many default behaviours that we can rethink and re-norm. What if we saw more people bringing their own metal or wooden cutlery to the next barbecue, more shoppers bringing home whole fruit instead of plastic-wrapped pre-cut, and more kids and employees bringing their own refillable water bottles and coffee mugs to school and work? The more we see it normalised, the more we’ll do it. That’s how social norming works.

And having Hollywood in on this would certainly help. Two years ago, Citywide, a feature film shot in Philadelphia was Hollywood’s first zero-waste film, which is a great start. More of this is welcome, including walking the talk within movie, television and advertising scenes by swapping in refillable and reusable containers where single-use plastics would otherwise be the default or showcasing repeat outfits on characters to decentre environmentally harmful fast fashion, much of which is made from plastic.

In business, thankfully, some local grocers allow shoppers to go plastic-free. More grocers should make this shift because consumers want it. Providing staples like cereal, oats, nuts and beans in bulk bins and letting shoppers bring their own containers is a good start. Buying in bulk tends to be more affordable but unfortunately, few stores offer that option, especially stores that target shoppers with lower incomes. Even shoppers with higher incomes lack options: Whole Foods, for example, has bulk bins but in most of its locations requires customers to use the provided plastic containers or bags, which defeats the purpose.

More low-hanging fruit for grocers: try using the milk bottle approach. In some grocery stores, milk is still available in glass bottles, which is good, albeit it comes with a steep deposit. Let’s extend that model of returnable containers to other products, and at a more affordable rate. Take yoghurt, for example. Stores could have an option to buy it in returnable glass containers, since the current plastic containers aren’t recyclable. This is not a fantasy but a possibility: a newly opened grocery store in France offers all of their items plastic-free.

For restaurants, more and more businesses across the US are supporting the use of returnable containers and cities like the District of Columbia offer grants to help ditch disposables. This is exactly what we need more of. People want the option to bring their own containers or use a returnable container so that they can have take-out without risking their health and the environment with exposure to plastic. Let’s give the people what they want.

Policy is arguably the hardest of the three paths to tackle since culture and business track more closely and immediately with consumer demand. To be clear, most Americans, in a bipartisan way, are sick of single-use plastics, which is why plastic bag bans are popping up across the US, and state capitals are seeing more legislative proposals to hold producers of plastic responsible for the life cycle of plastic. What makes policy the more difficult space is the petrochemical lobby that often stands in the way, keeping policymakers mum about the human health and environmental impacts while encouraging industry subsidies: the US has spent $9bn in tax subsidies on the construction of new plastics factories over the past 12 years.

Given the health and environmental harms associated with plastics production, the obvious policy fix is to make the producers responsible for the pollution, forcing them to clean up in places locally like Beaver Creek, Pennsylvania, where the local economy suffered after an ethane cracker plant started operating there. And then to clean up globally for the harm done, since governments are left with the tab of $32bn while the public is left with the costs of health impacts from endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in plastic.

The industry, meanwhile, is fighting tooth and nail to keep selling its harmful products, misleading the public into thinking recycling is an effective solution to plastic waste. It’s not, of course, which is why California is suing ExxonMobil for deception about plastics recycling. Meanwhile, the industry continues to interfere with United Nations global plastics treaty negotiations.

It’s time we diverted those billions of dollars that taxpayers spend subsidising deadly plastics production and, instead, develop products, companies and systems that make the low-plastic life the default option for everyone. That’s the healthier future we want to live in.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Aug. 15 (UPI) — A sixth round of United Nations negotiations on ending plastic pollution broke up in Switzerland early Friday without a deal after disagreements with oil-producing nations pushing for recycling solutions over reducing plastic use.

Delegates from 184 countries worked into the early hours in Geneva to bridge division between more than 100 nations pressing for production limits and oil-rich states, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, arguing that plastic was critical to their future economic health.

The final text did not place restrictions on plastic production but did address other issues like dangerous plastic chemicals, including forever chemicals, and making plastics easier to recycle — but left countries to implement changes as they saw best.

“We have missed a historic opportunity, but we have to keep going and act urgently. The planet and present and future generations need this treaty,” said the Cuban delegation.

Colombia blamed the collapse of what was supposed to be the final treaty negotiations, eight months after countries failed to conclude a deal in Busan, South Korea, on a small group of countries, which it said “simply don’t want an agreement.”

That claim was echoed by Greenpeace’s delegation, saying in a news release that the call was clear for a strong, legally binding treaty that ended plastic pollution from extraction to disposal, protected human health and provided financial help for the clean up

“The plastics crisis is accelerating, and the petrochemical industry is determined to bury us for short-term profits. Now is not the time to blink. Now is the time for courage, resolve and perseverance. And world leaders must listen. The future of our health and planet depends on it,” said the group’s delegation lead Graham Forbes.

The European Union, which along with Britain, had been pushing to cut plastic production and for global plastics standards to boost recycling, was less pessimistic about the outcome, saying it formed a strong basis for further negotiations.

“Plastic pollution is one of the defining crises of our age, and our responsibility to act is clear. While the latest text on the table does not yet meet all our ambitions, it is a step forward — and the perfect must not be the enemy of the good,” said EU Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall.

“The European Union will continue to push for a stronger, binding agreement that safeguards public health, protects our environment, and builds a clean, competitive, and circular economy. We do this not only for ourselves, but for the generations yet to come,” Roswall said.

The effort looked set to drag into a fifth year, long beyond the 2024 deadline for a comprehensive agreement dealing with the “full life cycle of plastic” mandated in a resolution adopted by the U.N. Environment Assembly in March 2022.

Negotiations to secure a global treaty to combat plastic pollution were in limbo as talks entered their final day after dozens of countries rejected the latest draft text.

With time running out to seal a deal among the 184 countries gathered at the United Nations in Geneva, the talks’ chair, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, produced a draft text based on the few areas of convergence, in an attempt to find common ground.

But the draft succeeded only in infuriating virtually all corners, and the text was immediately shredded as one country after another ripped it to bits.

For the self-styled ambitious countries, it was an empty document shorn of bold action like curbing production and phasing out toxic ingredients, and reduced to a waste management accord.

And for the so-called Like-Minded Group, with Gulf states leading the charge, it crossed too many of their red lines and did not do enough to narrow the scope of what they might be signing up for.

The talks towards a legally binding instrument on tackling plastic pollution opened on August 5 and were scheduled to close on Thursday, the latest attempt after five previous rounds of talks over the past two and a half years which failed to seal an agreement.

Valdivieso’s draft text does not limit plastic production or address chemicals used in plastic products, which have been contentious issues at the talks.

About 100 countries want to limit production as well as tackle cleanup and recycling. Many have said it’s essential to address toxic chemicals. Oil-producing countries only want to eliminate plastic waste.

The larger bloc of countries seeking more ambitious actions blasted what they consider a dearth of legally binding action. But oil-producing states said the text went too far for their liking.

Lowered ambition or ambition for all?

Panama said the goal was to end plastic pollution, not simply to reach an agreement.

“It is not ambition: it is surrender,” their negotiator said.

The European Union said the proposal was “not acceptable” and lacked “clear, robust and actionable measures”, while Kenya said there were “no global binding obligations on anything”.

Tuvalu, speaking for 14 Pacific island developing states, said the draft risked producing a treaty “that fails to protect our people, culture and ecosystem from the existential threat of plastic pollution”.

Britain called it a text that drives countries “towards the lowest common denominator”, and Norway said it was “not delivering on our promise … to end plastic pollution”.

Bangladesh said the draft “fundamentally fails” to reflect the “urgency of the crisis”, saying that it did not address the full life cycle of plastic items, nor their toxic chemical ingredients and their health impacts.

Oil-producing states, which call themselves the Like-Minded Group – and include Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran – want the treaty to focus primarily on waste management.

Kuwait, speaking for the group, said the text had “gone beyond our red lines”, adding that “without consensus, there is no treaty worth signing”.

“This is not about lowering ambition: it’s about making ambition possible for all,” it said.

Saudi Arabia said there were “many red lines crossed for the Arab Group” and reiterated calls for the scope of the treaty to be defined “once and for all”.

The United Arab Emirates said the draft “goes beyond the mandate” for the talks, while Qatar said that without a clear definition of scope, “we don’t understand what obligations we are entering into”.

India, while backing Kuwait, saw the draft as “a good enough starting point ” to go forward on finalising the text.

The draft could now change significantly and a new version is expected on Thursday, the last scheduled day of the negotiations.

With ministers in Geneva for the final day of negotiations, environmental NGOs following the talks urged them to grasp the moment.

The World Wide Fund for Nature said the remaining hours would be “critical in turning this around”.

“The implications of a watered-down, compromised text on people and nature around the world is immense,” and failure on Thursday “means more damage, more harm, more suffering”, it said.

Greenpeace delegation chief Graham Forbes called on ministers to “uphold the ambition they have promised” and address “the root cause: the relentless expansion of plastic production”.

The Center for International Environmental Law’s delegation chief David Azoulay said the draft was a “mockery”, and as for eventually getting to a deal, he said: “It will be very difficult to come back from this.”

More than 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced globally each year, half of which is for single-use items.

Nearly half, or 46 percent, ends up in landfills, while 17 percent is incinerated and 22 percent is mismanaged and becomes rubbish.

Houayxay, Laos – Fishing went well today for Khon, a Laotian fisherman, who lives in a floating house built from plastic drums, scrap metal and wood on the Mekong River.

“I caught two catfish,” the 52-year-old tells Al Jazeera proudly, lifting his catch for inspection.

Khon’s simple houseboat contains all he needs to live on this mighty river: A few metal pots, a fire to cook food on and to keep warm by at night, as well as some nets and a few clothes.

What Khon does not always have is fish.

“There are days when I catch nothing. It’s frustrating,” he said.

“The water levels change all the time because of the dams. And now they say the river is polluted, too. Up there in Myanmar, they dig in the mountains. Mines, or something like that. And all that toxic stuff ends up here,” he adds.

Khon lives in Laos’s northwestern Bokeo province on one of the most scenic stretches of the Mekong River as it meanders through the heart of the Golden Triangle – the borderland shared by Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.

This remote region has long been infamous for drug production and trafficking.

Now it is caught up in the global scramble for gold and rare earth minerals, crucial for the production of new technologies and used in everything from smartphones to electric cars.

Over the past year, rivers in this region, such as the Ruak, Sai and Kok – all tributaries of the Mekong – have shown abnormal levels of arsenic, lead, nickel and manganese, according to Thailand’s Pollution Control Department.

Arsenic, in particular, has exceeded World Health Organization safety limits, prompting health warnings for riverside communities.

These tributaries feed directly into the Mekong and contamination has spread to parts of the river’s mainstream. The effects have been observed in Laos, prompting the Mekong River Commission to declare the situation “moderately serious”.

“Recent official water quality testing clearly indicates that the Mekong River on the Thai-Lao border is contaminated with arsenic,” Pianporn Deetes, Southeast Asia campaigns director for the advocacy group International Rivers, told Al Jazeera.

“This is alarming and just the first chapter of the crisis, if the mining continues,” Pianporn said.

“Fishermen have recently caught diseased, young catfish. This is a matter of regional public health, and it needs urgent action from governments,” she added.

The source of the heavy metals contamination is believed to be upriver in Myanmar’s Shan State, where dozens of unregulated mines have sprung up as the search for rare earth minerals intensifies globally.

Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington and an expert on Southeast Asia, said at least a dozen, and possibly as many as 20, mines focused on gold and rare earth extraction have been established in southern Shan State over the past year alone.

Myanmar is now four years into a civil war and lawlessness reigns in the border area, which is held by two powerful ethnic armed groups: the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) and the United Wa State Army (UWSA).

Myanmar’s military government has “no real control”, Abuza said, apart from holding Tachileik town, the region’s main border crossing between Thailand and Myanmar.

Neither the RCSS nor the UWSA are “fighting the junta”, he said, explaining how both are busy enriching themselves from the chaos in the region and the rush to open mines.

“In this vacuum, mining has exploded – likely with Chinese traders involved. The military in Naypyidaw can’t issue permits or enforce environmental rules, but they still take their share of the profits,” Abuza said.

‘Alarming decline’

Pollution from mining is not the Mekong River’s only ailment.

For years, the health of the river has been degraded by a growing chain of hydropower dams that have drastically altered its natural rhythm and ecology.

In the Mekong’s upper reaches, inside China, almost a dozen huge hydropower dams have been built, including the Xiaowan and Nuozhadu dams, which are said to be capable of holding back a huge amount of the river’s flow.

Further downstream, Laos has staked its economic future on hydropower.

According to the Mekong Dam Monitor, which is hosted by the Stimson Centre think tank in Washington, DC, at least 75 dams are now operational on the Mekong’s tributaries, and two in Laos – Xayaburi and Don Sahong – are directly on the mainstream river.

As a rule, hydropower is a cleaner alternative to coal.

But the rush to dam the Mekong is driving another type of environmental crisis.

According to WWF and the Mekong River Commission, the Mekong River basin once supported about 60 million people and provided up to 25 percent of the world’s freshwater fish catch.

Today, one in five fish species in the Mekong is at risk of extinction, and the river’s sediment and nutrient flows have been severely reduced, as documented in a 2023–2024 Mekong Dam Monitor report and research by International Rivers.

“The alarming decline in fish populations in the Mekong is an urgent wake-up call for action to save these extraordinary – and extraordinarily important – species, which underpin not only the region’s societies and economies but also the health of the Mekong’s freshwater ecosystems,” the WWF’s Asia Pacific Regional Director Lan Mercado said at the launch of a 2024 report titled The Mekong’s Forgotten Fishes.

In Houayxay, the capital of Bokeo province, the markets appeared mostly absent of fish during a recent visit.

At Kad Wang View, the town’s main market, the fish stalls were nearly deserted.

“Maybe this afternoon, or maybe tomorrow,” said Mali, a vendor in her 60s. In front of her, Mali had arranged her small stock of fish in a circle, perhaps hoping to make the display look fuller for potential customers.

At another market, Sydonemy, just outside Houayxay town, the story was the same. The fish stalls were bare.

“Sometimes the fish come, sometimes they don’t. We just wait,” another vendor said.

“There used to be giant fish here,” recalled Vilasai, 53, who comes from a fishing family but now works as a taxi driver.

“Now the river gives us little. Even the water for irrigation – people are scared to use it. No one knows if it’s still clean,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the pollution from Myanmar’s mines.

‘The river used to be predictable’

Ian G Baird, professor of geography and Southeast Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said upstream dams – especially those in China – have had serious downstream effects in northern Thailand and Laos.

“The ecosystem and the lives that depend on the river evolved to adapt to specific hydrological conditions,” Baird told Al Jazeera.

“But since the dams were built, those conditions have changed dramatically. There are now rapid water level fluctuations in the dry season, which used to be rare, and this has negative impacts on both the river and the people,” he said.

Another major effect is the reversal of the river’s natural cycle.

“Now there is more water in the dry season and less during the rainy season. That reduces flooding and the beneficial ecological effects of the annual flood pulse,” Baird explained.

“The dams hold water during the rainy season and release it in the dry season to maximise energy output and profits. But that also kills seasonally flooded forests and disrupts the river’s ecological function,” he said.

Bun Chan, 45, lives with his wife Nanna Kuhd, 40, on a floating house near Houayxay. He fishes while his wife sells whatever he catches at the local market.

On a recent morning, he cast his net again and again – but for nothing.

“Looks like I won’t catch anything today,” Bun Chan told Al Jazeera as he pulled up his empty net.

“The other day I caught a few, but we didn’t sell them. We’re keeping them in cages in the water, so at least we have something to eat if I don’t catch more,” he said.

Hom Phan has been a fisherman on the Mekong his entire life.

He steers his wooden boat across the river, following a route he knows by instinct. In some parts of the river, the current is strong enough now to drag everything under, the 67-year-old says.

All around him, the silence is broken only by the chug of his small outboard engine and the calls of distant birds.

“The river used to be predictable. Now we don’t know when it will rise or fall,” Hom Phan said.

“Fish can’t find their spawning grounds. They’re disappearing. And we might too, if nothing changes,” he told Al Jazeera.

Evening approaches in Houayxay, and Khon, the fisherman, rolls up his nets and prepares dinner in his floating home.

As he waits for the fire to catch to cook a meal, he quietly contemplates the great river he lives on.

Despite the dams in China, the pollution from mines in neighbouring Myanmar, and the increasing difficulty in landing the catch he relies on to survive, Khon was outwardly serene as he considered his next day of fishing.

With his eyes fixed on the waters that flowed deeply beneath his home, he said with a smile: “We try again tomorrow.”

California is a state of contradictions. We lead the nation in environmental regulation, tout our clean energy goals with pride and champion a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. Yet despite this green image, our economy — and daily life — still very much run on oil and gas.

Fossil fuels account for roughly 8% of California’s $3 trillion economy — but that’s the first 8%. “If you don’t get that first 8%,” I tell my students, “You don’t get the rest of our economy.” Oil powers everything from trucks to tractors to construction equipment. Without it, you can’t build roads or bridges or get goods to grocery stores. Without refined petroleum products, you don’t make cement, steel, plastics or even the lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles.

Despite these realities, California energy policy is leading to the dismantling of the critical infrastructure that supports this essential system. Our state has lost more than 30 refineries in the last few decades. We are now down to just nine major gasoline-producing facilities, and two more are scheduled to close in the coming months, Phillips 66 in Los Angeles and Valero in the Bay Area. Those two plants represent 284,000 barrels of daily production and account for nearly 18% of the state’s total refining capacity.

California sits atop one of the largest untapped reserves in the world, the Monterey Shale. But because of policy and regulation, we import most of our oil — including from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Guyana and Ecuador. California has also imported oil from Russia and Venezuela. Ironically, we have among the world’s cleanest refining standards, but we import fuel from places with lower environmental and labor protections.

All of this is enabled by a supply chain that’s more vulnerable than most realize. We have no major pipelines bringing oil to California. We rely on ships — many from Asia — that take 30 to 40 days to deliver fuel. These foreign tankers pollute at staggering rates. Stunningly, because that pollution happens over international waters, it doesn’t get counted by the California Air Resources Board. Closing a refinery in California and importing more fuel causes a net increase in pollution. And adding to our reliance on foreign oil is risky when global instability is rising.

This isn’t just a self-inflicted energy crisis in the making. It’s also a national security issue.

Military bases in California, Nevada and Arizona depend heavily on in-state refineries for specialized aviation fuel and other petroleum products essential to operations. As refineries shut down, the supply chain narrows, increasing reliance on imports from Asia and elsewhere. These gaps create unacceptable logistical and strategic risks for U.S. military readiness in the western states.

And remember, there are estimated to be hundreds of millions of barrels of accessible oil under our feet. Yet we’ve built an energy model that depends on importing foreign oil and, now, a growing dependency on foreign-supplied gasoline.

This isn’t just unsustainable. It’s also borderline irresponsible.

California’s energy transition is inevitable — but how we get there matters. We can’t pretend fossil fuels are already gone. We still need them for the economy, for mobility, for national security and for the working people who can’t afford a $60,000 electric vehicle or a solar roof.

We have the tools, talent and resources to lead a responsible energy transition, one that leverages our in-state production, balances environmental stewardship with economic pragmatism and protects our most vulnerable communities along the way.

But we have to be honest about where we are. And right now, fossil fuels still power the Golden State.

Especially because of coming refinery rules and a new tax taking effect in July, Californians are set to pay the highest gas prices in the nation. Our prices are inflated by a web of taxes, fees and boutique regulations that has grown thicker and more expensive over time. Even if oil dropped to $0 per barrel and refining were free, Californians would still be paying about $1.82 a gallon at the pump — $1.64 of that from state taxes and fees, plus 18 cents in federal gas tax.

According to CalTrans, Californians drive about 1,200 miles a month. If you’re a working-class Californian and gas goes up 50 cents per gallon, that adds about $500 in annual fuel costs. And because you pay for that with after-tax dollars, you’d need to earn at least an extra $750 just to cover it.

That matters to a construction worker commuting 60 miles a day in a pickup truck. It matters to a single mom cleaning homes across the city or a physical therapist driving to house calls. Most of these people can’t easily trade in their vehicles for Teslas and dodge gasoline hikes. Consumer analysis as noted in CalMatters indicates that the majority of EVs are bought by higher-income Californians living in areas such as Atherton, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and Mountain View.

The people hit hardest by rising gasoline prices are the ones least able to afford alternatives. For most Californians, there is no viable mass transit available. People are just stuck spending more and more of their income on the gas-powered vehicles their lives depend on. Our state’s policies punish people for not being able to adapt quickly enough to a green future that’s not yet built. It’s a regressive tax masquerading as environmental action.

Until California realistically bridges the gap between aspirational climate goals and equitable policy execution, the state’s lofty environmental vision will continue to rest uneasily on the shoulders of its most vulnerable.

The new state excise tax adding about 2 cents a gallon went into effect July 1, and CARB is pushing for a new low-carbon fuel standard that could add and potentially major costs to the prices of gasoline and diesel fuel. No one knows exactly how much — not even the board proposing the rules.

At a recent Assembly oversight hearing, CARB officials were asked if they analyzed their regulations for consumer impacts. Their answer: We don’t calculate that. The room went silent. It was a stunning admission — regulators pushing policy without running the math.

No wonder we’re seeing an exodus of working families. By layering new and unclear costs on top of an already overstretched system, CARB and other regulators are creating what could become a self-inflicted economic shock.

And for what? Not environmental progress. California will be forced to source more and more fuel from overseas — at greater environmental and economic cost. By relying on polluting sources and carbon-intensive shipping, we’ve simply outsourced our emissions to other countries. California is not reducing emissions. We are exporting them.

If this sounds reckless, it is. But more than that, it’s unjust.

These policies are not burdening the wealthy. They’re crushing the working class. They’re forcing families to choose between gas and groceries, between job access and housing stability. They’re also outsourcing jobs overseas.

And they’re being implemented by unelected bureaucrats who, by their own admission in testimony before California lawmakers, haven’t calculated the real-world impact.

The people of California deserve better than this. They deserve honesty, transparency and policy grounded in economic realism, not ideological fantasy and environmental dogma. If recent and coming changes become a tipping point, it won’t be because of some unpredictable global event. It will be because we chose not to look before we leaped.

The path forward demands a pause, a recalibration and a return to common sense. Otherwise, this summer could mark not just another price hike — but the day we began losing control of our energy future.

Michael A. Mische is an associate professor at USC’s Marshall School of Business. A former KPMG principal, he is the author of eight books on business and strategy.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The NAACP filed an intent to sue Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI on Tuesday over concerns about air pollution generated by a supercomputer near predominantly Black communities in Memphis.

The xAI data center began operating last year, powered by pollution-emitting gas turbines, without first applying for a permit. Officials have said an exemption allowed them to operate for up to 364 days without a permit, but Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Patrick Anderson said at a news conference that there is no such exemption for turbines — and that regardless, it has now been more than 364 days.

The SELC is representing the NAACP in its legal challenge against xAI and its permit application, now being considered by the Shelby County Health Department.

Musk’s xAI said the turbines will be equipped with technology to reduce emissions — and that it’s already boosting the city’s economy by investing billions of dollars in the supercomputer facility, paying millions in local taxes and creating hundreds of jobs. The company also is spending $35 million to build a power substation and $80 million to build a water recycling plant to the support Memphis Light, Gas and Water, the local utility.

Opponents say the supercomputing center is stressing the power grid, and that the turbines emit smog and carbon dioxide, pollutants that cause lung irritation such as nitrogen oxides, and the carcinogen formaldehyde, experts say.

The chamber of commerce in Memphis made a surprise announcement in June 2024 that xAI planned to build a supercomputer in the city. The data center quickly set up shop in an industrial park south of Memphis, near factories and a gas-powered plant operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The SELC has claimed the use of the turbines violates the Clean Air Act, and that residents who live near the xAI facility already face cancer risks at four times the national average. The group also has sent a petition to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Critics say xAI installed the turbines without any oversight or notice to the community. The SELC also hired a firm to fly over the site and saw that 35 turbines — not 15 as the company requests in its permit — are located there.

The permit itself says emissions from the site “will be an area source for hazardous air pollutants.” A permit would allow the health department, which has received 1,700 public comments about the permit, to monitor air quality near the facility.

At a community gathering hosted by the county health department in April, many of the people speaking in opposition cited the additional pollution burden in a city that already received an “F” grade for ozone pollution from the American Lung Association.

A statement read by xAI’s Brent Mayo at the meeting said the company wants to “strengthen the fabric of the community,” and estimated that tax revenues from the data center are likely to exceed $100 million by next year.

“This tax revenue will support vital programs like public safety, health and human services, education, firefighters, police, parks and so much more,” said the statement, a copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press.

The company also apparently wants to expand: The chamber of commerce said in March that xAI had purchased a 1-million-square-foot property at a second location, not far from the current facility.

One nearby neighborhood dealing with decades of industrial pollution is Boxtown, a tight-knit community founded by freed slaves in the 1860s. It was named Boxtown after residents used material dumped from railroad boxcars to fortify their homes. The area features houses, wooded areas and wetlands, and its inhabitants are mostly working-class residents.

Boxtown won a victory in 2021 against two corporations that sought to build an oil pipeline through the area. Valero and Plains All American Pipeline canceled the project after protests by residents and activists led by State Rep. Justin J. Pearson, who called it a potential danger to the community and an aquifer that provides clean drinking water to Memphis.

Pearson, who represents nearby neighborhoods, said “clean air is a human right” as he called for people in Memphis to unite against xAI.

“There is not a person, no matter how wealthy or how powerful, that can deny the fact that everybody has a right to breathe clean air,” said Pearson, who compared the fight against xAI to David and Goliath.

“We’re all right to be David, because we know how the story ends,” he said.

Sainz writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Travis Loller contributed to this report from Nashville, Tenn.